THE LARGE ONES HAVE JOINED I.C.E.

by Michelle DeRose

My grade school had no gymnasium.

The auditorium hosted PE class

on rain-darkened days or those slick 

with ice, the low stage across the front

shrouded in its thick brown curtain.

Sometimes a tumbling mat and low-

mounted 2 x 4 meant gymnastics,

balance practice as we dip-stepped

across the board, arms in airplane wings,

or body control while we somersaulted.

But when upcoming plays or assemblies

required a clear floor, rain meant dodgeball.

The largest classmates hurled soccer

and volley balls at the tiny and slow.

Me with two friends, hidden in folds.

Even across the room, a direct hit

could bruise, slap, jangle teeth. The large

ones were praised for their power,

their aim, the swiftness with which

one by one they took us out.

We just hoped to be unnoticed behind the brown,

that our quiet retreat to art’s cloaked stage

would enable us to endure the long hour,

return to our desk where Stuart Little

waited in its belly for us.

Michelle DeRose is Professor Emerita of English at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is writing a poem a day in her retirement. It might not be enough for sanity under the current administration in the US. She invites all who yearn for a holy heart attack to meditate on it at 10 a.m. EST every day.

INDIVISIBLE, WE STAND

by Darrell Petska

Have you noticed how crowded
America’s thin air has become?

Now it’s homeless humans
joining immigrant humans,
LGBTQIA humans,
Black humans—assorted humans
of every persuasion, more
and more each day, into thin air.

Or so would hearts shriveled by hate
and power lusts have us believe:
think Hitler and Pol Pot, Pinochet
in Chile, Netanyahu in Gaza, and
America’s Trump disappearing souls
who don’t fit white, regressive ideals.

But the disappeared, the disparaged,
do not go away, whether the living
to whom we owe their dignity as they
pursue universally human needs
and aspirations, or the dead
to whom we owe life’s memory.

To our own selves, as well, we owe
the essential humaneness we ask
of all other humans. There can be
no invisibility, only indivisibility.
We are one body. That which divides
we must call out: inhuman!

Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Father of five and grandfather of seven, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin with his wife of more than 50 years.

JULIO

by Judy Strang

Screenshot provided by the poet’s son from the video he recorded.

My son told me 

he’d put on his vest and 

hooked the phone into the chest pocket facing out, 

pressed video, then strode across the narrow city street. 

That was his spontaneous choice, 

just home from his night shift, 

after parking his car across from his apartment,

after seeing two masked figures accost a person on the sidewalk.

 

In his paramedic suit and bullet proof vest with the phone-on-video,

he told them his name and pointed to his photo badge. 

He asked them to identify themselves,

looked at their badges—photo-less, flimsy, 

“Those could be printed on Etsy,” he said, “How do I know who you are?” 

They would not answer. But he got the name of the person they were taking, 

who gave it to him freely. 

My son yelled at the masked faces, “Take off your masks. 

Show us who you are.” 

And he yelled it again, venting his anger at their secrecy 

at their silence 

at their unjust power—

then it was over.

They had shoved the man into their unmarked car and were driving away.

 

My son told me

that’s when he let loose the language he’d wanted to spit in their faces. 

He threw it at their backs, watching the car disappear,

then stood there on the sidewalk, 

next to the door to the stairs leading to his apartment, 

and called the police. 

He waited for them to come so he could report the incident. 

A paramedic, he would speak his truth, 

“to serve human need, with respect for human dignity,”

and he would wonder what would happen 

to the man he would never see again 

whose name he would never forget

 

Judy Strang lives in the woods of Amherst County, VA, where she writes creative nonfiction, directs the Sourwood Forest artist residency program for the Pedlar River Institute, and works part time for the Harte Center for Teaching & Learning at Washington & Lee University (Lexington, VA). Her creative nonfiction, including What Holds Us Here: pieces from a place in the woods (Blackwell Press 2023), examines how humans understand (or not) their place within more-than-human nature. 

THE INJUSTICE THAT SCREAMS

by Chinedu lhekoronye 

They say we are free—

But chains still rattle in our dreams.

Not of iron, but of law,

Not of shackles, but of schemes.

The gavel strikes, but truth lies slain,

Beneath the cloak of legal pain.

The voices rise, the system scoffs,

While justice sleeps in ivory lofts.

They loot the land, then preach of peace,

While hunger roams and rights decrease.

They jail the bold, reward the sly,

And feed the poor another lie.

Who gave them crowns to crush the weak?

Who taught them power means not to speak?

Who drew the lines where blood must spill—

Then wrote the laws that bless the kill?

But we are fire, born from dust,

Rising now because we must.

Our words are swords, our truth is flame,

And we will set alight your shame.

For every child denied a voice,

For every vote turned into noise,

For every dream beneath your heel—

We stand. We shout. We will not kneel.

So let the tyrants learn at last:

A nation's silence cannot last.

The day will come, the truth will rise—

And justice will unblind her eyes.

Chinedu lhekoronye is a Nigerian, human rights lawyer, and poetic writer. He uses his writings to draw global attention to injustice in different places. He believes that injustice in one place is injustice globally.

HOW WE ROLL

Prelude to prayer and action

by Darrell Petska

AI-generated gif by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

Killing. Maiming.
Forever grieving.
That’s how we’ve rolled
since descending from trees
and living in caves.
Rolled with spear, with bow,
with sword, gun, and bomb.
Killing. Maiming.
For power, gold or spite,
god or country, king or knave.
Forever grieving.
Our own graves digging
or those of our loved ones.

Is killing our imperative?
Sorrow forever to yoke our necks?
Or might we have (we must believe
we have) hidden wings
awaiting prayer and act
to relieve us of these roads we roll on,
spill blood on, die on over and over
until life is cheapened, some cruel curse?
Wings we can will to grow,
to spirit away hatred, envy, and fear.
Wings at long last on which to fly
along peaceable skyways promoting
unity, egality, and love.

Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Father of five and grandfather of seven, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin with his wife of more than 50 years.

CONNECTING THE DISCONNECT

by Dana Yost

“A strange unrest hovers over the nation: / 

This is the last dance.” —Robert Bly, “Unrest”

I wake to the harshest

of dreams. I make a poster

one weekend—photo of a little

girl from Gaza, hungry. Afraid.

Arms reaching out, a begging,

pleading moment—so much

agony on that little face.

I write a caption:

"Please don’t kill me."

I show this to people, and they

say you can't share this: 

it's too terrible, too severe.

So it sits on my desk.

Someone wants me to write

about my earlier days,

But do they really matter?

I try, humoring them, but get

nowhere. Those days seem

puny. Even childhood, formative,

but so far away, lost to thunder

and the blasts of artillery

in another land. Someone says

there is goodness yet. They point

to flowers in a garden

down the street. They smell nice,

but, for me, it doesn't last. A man holds

a woman's hand down at the

beach, but I don’t sit with them.

In Ellay, the masks come

as the faces of hatred serving

power, power serving hatred.

The same. I come from

the same farmland as Robert

Bly, forty years later. The snow

blows across fields, the corn

groans to be born. 

But the prairie is no barrier

to speaking truth about evil,

no hindrance to fulminating

about the big wrongdoing.

I wake from a new dream

alive with anger and clarity:

these words must be said.

I want the men in masks

to lift them from their faces,

join the masses, the evil

to be buried at the point

of a pen. Then, I will sit.

Dana Yost grew up in southwestern Minnesota, an hour from Robert Bly’s farm, forty years after him. But Yost shares Bly’s early interest in taking on the establishment.

CUAUHTÉMOC

by Jennifer Hernandez

For the crew members who lost their lives in the tragic crash of the Mexican tall ship into the Brooklyn Bridge. The ship, Cuauhtémoc, was named after the last Aztec emperor.

 
Sometimes the power goes out. 
Sometimes, it’s smallpox. 
 
The most inconsequential events 
can change the course of a river, 
the course of a life. 
 
We never know 
where the journey will end. 
Nor when. 
 
The leader this morning 
might be gone by nightfall. 
 
Through it all, the currents 
keep pushing us forward. 
 
Each moment we are closer 
to the finale. So we must 
choose to resist 
with all our might. 
 
Like Cuauhtémoc—
to never give up, 
never give in, 
never compromise 
who we are and 
what we believe 
to be true. 
 
We must don the fairy lights, 
wave the big, beautiful flag. 
 
We must stand on the bow, 
watch as the sunset plays 
between clouds at dusk, 
glimmers on the water’s surface.
 
Life is fragile. 
Life is glorious. 
 
La vida siempre 
vale la pena vivirla.

Jennifer Hernandez lives in Minnesota where she teaches immigrant youth and writes poetry, flash, and creative non-fiction. Once again, her recent writing has been colored by her distress at the dangerous nonsense that appears in her daily news feed. She is marching with her pen. Pushcart-nominated, her work appears in such publications as Sleet Magazine, Heron Tree, Northern Eclecta, and Silver Birch Press. She is working on a chapbook of hybrid writing about teaching as a political act.

DECLARATION OF A TERRORIST

by Taylor Norris

Knee on a neck, 

Match poised to strike,

With a final exhale, 

Flames did ignite. 

 

A firestorm erupted,

Fervent movement did arise, 

Suffocated by a tsunami, 

Of "All Lives Matter" cries. 

 

Abusive power wears many masks, 

Yet speaks a single tongue,

A requiem of callousness, 

Tide of lives wrung.

 

Seized, silenced, deprived of voice, 

Crushed by tempest creed, 

As the faceless gasp for breath, 

Dragged beneath waves of greed.

 

Palestinians butchered by golem rampage, 

While leaders fiddle in their gilded bubble,

Israel's broken promises rain down,

As last dregs of conscience soak into the rubble.

 

Students denouncing genocide, 

Abducted off streets like trash,

Futures and rights vanished, 

Disappeared in a Gestapo flash.

 

Ukrainians in scorched ruins stand tall, 

Courage unwavering, despite the pain,

Their sacrifice met with jealous disdain,

As an American führer bows to Putin's reign.

 

Sudanese starve on apathy alone, 

Wasting away to hollow bone, 

While the privileged eat cake, 

Glutted, glued to their phone.

 

Immigrants condemned, banished beyond aid,

Hostages snatched to a circus cage,

Mercy extinguished; identity stripped,

Erased by those with contrived rage.

 

Tiny tots seen, once heard, now lost,

Voiceless, cast out with derision,

Birthright a farce, a due process mirage,

Dispelled with coldness and precision.

 

Judges defied, jailed with contempt, 

Justice held ransom, chained to the bell, 

As cracked scales teeter on the brink, 

Ears crane for liberty's death knell.

 

If my conviction of unity, 

Is intolerable sedition, 

Call me a TERRORIST, 

I embrace the affliction.

 

Truth-teller in an age of lies, 

Empathetic when compassion dies,

Revolutionary when liberties decline,

Relentless when cruelty is the infection by design,

Outspoken when silence is the golden law,

Resilient by refusing to withdraw,

Inclusive when others build walls of divide,

Solidarity with the denigrated caste aside,

Transformative in spirit that cannot abide.

 

The most sacred amendment, first on the parchment, 

Will withstand your calculated bombardment,

If TERRORIST I must be, in your criminalized fiction, 

I'll wear your pointy yellow badge with distinction.

 

While propaganda devours, 

Truth strikes with bolt and thunder, 

Electrified, embers take flight,

Defiance echoes, never again forced under.

Taylor Norris treads the thin verse between comfortable and the disturbed that can’t be unseen. In the stone age that was pre-y2k Taylor was a film critic for a LGBTQ publication and was published in two poetry anthologies with a poem translated for a Spanish newspaper. Taylor was also produced in Best Short-Lived 2.0 in San Francisco. After a long hiatus, she is returning back to her roots.

WHAT POPE LEO MIGHT BE THINKING

by Lynne Barnes

Your mother was ill and away

when you were very little.

Did this mean that one of your

foundation beams was laid out as clay,

creating that listing psychic gait

that seems to have hobbled you

since toddlerhood?

 

Your early language threw darts

of defense against harm inside

your family’s nest of punishment

alternating with neglect.

You began sharpening knives

of revenge, destructiveness

back then, just to survive.

As you matured, you were mentored

by those who were traumatized like you.

 

Oh, if only your resilient spirit had been

gifted just a little more warmth

at your first hearth, perhaps your sense of

self-worth would not have become pea-sized,

inside and protected by, a hot air balloon.

Heated molecules of fear inflate

that bubble of space around your core.

 

Your borders are so thin and vulnerable

that you must strike first, slur people away

to feel safe, and your re-tells of conversations

all have others referring to you as sir.

 

You use loser, lowlife, liddle, lightweight,

for others. And for yourself you say

tremendous, perfect, winner, greatest,

and speak with clueless pride

that other humans kiss your ass.

 

You, dear sir, learned so early to strike first,

before anyone could breach your fragile border,

see the size of your ego infirmity,

but now, power has enriched, fused your childhood’s

uranium grains into a global nuclear cruelty.

 

We must fight, drain your power, disarm you whose wounds

block you from the language of human love and care.

As we face off we’re terrified, but also Sad!—witnessing

a fellow human walled off from the beauty of empathy as prayer.

Lynne Barnes is a retired psychiatric nurse and librarian who has lived in San Francisco since 1969. Her poetry memoir, Falling into Flowers (Blue Light Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award.

A RETRO INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

by Ralph La Rosa

With a nod to Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us”

Group of Breaker boys. Location: Pittston, Pennsylvania. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, 1911 January. Source: Library of Congress

The POTUS claims a monarchy, his MAGA boon,

and gutting government, his twisted power

fires thousands, his threats make allies cower.

I don’t know, he says when plotting ruin;

don’t know that blazing August’s now in June;

don’t know about those fed by our endowers—

the sick and war-torn wilting faster than flowers.

I don’t know on trade’s a muddled tune:

He melts down, rages to even the score,

and dictates an Industrial creed outworn

that exploits children, the weak and struggling poor.

Not unionized, their workers’ rights are shorn.

Such crises and chaos democracies deplore

make the knowing world react with scorn.

Ralph La Rosa has published prose on major American writers, including Emerson and Thoreau, and has placed short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and film scripts. These days, he mostly writes poetry, appearing on the Internet, in print journals and anthologies. His books include the chapbook Sonnet Stanzas and full-length Ghost Trees and My Miscellaneous Muse. He Loves The New Verse News!